Fedayeen

The fedayeen, meaning "those who sacrifice themselves" in Arabic, is a type of military unit that is willing to sacrifice itself. The term was coined by the Hashshashin order, whose members were willing to die in the struggle against slavery; since then, it has been applied to various Arab or Muslim resistance organizations. In 1946, Fada'iyan-e Islam, one of the first Islamist terrorist groups, was founded in Iran, and Palestinian guerrillas also adopted the name. Fedayeen forces would strike military and civilian targets in Israel after the Arab-Israeli War, living in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. From 1948 to 1980, fedayeen was used by Western media outlets to describe Palestinian terror cells, but the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization led to a decline in the usage of the vague term fedayeen, as the terrorists now belonged to a specific organization. Another well-known fedayeen was Fedayeen Saddam, a Baghdad-based Iraqi Ba'athist paramilitary group that was loyal to Saddam Hussein from 1995 until his overthrow in 2003.